It is also to be considered that such disarrangement of books as inevitably follows free admission to the shelves deprives the very persons who claim this privilege, of finding what they seek, until a complete replacement takes place, throughout the library, and this is necessarily a work of time. That it involves much more time and consequent delay than is occasioned by the re-shelving of books used in a day, is apparent when we consider that in the latter case, only the number of volumes actually withdrawn from shelves by the library attendants have to be replaced, and that these are in conveniently assorted piles all ready to go to their respective shelves; while in the other case, the displacement is made by many hands, most of them careless of any convenience but their own, and moreover, the disarranged books are, or are liable to be, scattered on the wrong shelves, thus throwing the entire library into disorder, requiring great pains, knowledge, and time to repair. In any well-regulated library, the absence of any book from its place can almost always be accounted for. Thus it is either--1. In the reading room, in use; or 2. Charged out to a borrower; or 3. Sent to the binder for rebinding, or repair; or 4. Reserved for some reader's use; or 5. In temporary use by a cataloguer, or some other library assistant; or 6. Among the books not yet re-shelved from recent use. Now each of these is a legitimate reason for the absence of any book not found in its place. By search under each of these heads, _seriatim_, aided by the memory of librarian and assistants, the missing volume should be readily located, and soon availed of for use. But in the case of books misplaced by readers, no such tracing out of the whereabouts of any volume is effectual, for the reason that the book may have been (and probably is) put on some shelf where it does not belong. And the question, where in an extensive collection, a book-hunter admitted to freely range over all the shelves, and a stranger to the minute classification of books, has misplaced the missing volumes, is an insoluble problem, except by hunting over or handling the entire library. In this close practical view of the case we have to add to the long list of the enemies of books, formerly enumerated, those who demand a right to browse (as they term it) among the shelves of a public library, and who displace the books they take down to gratify, it may be, only an idle curiosity. Their offence consists, not in being anxious to see the books, but in preventing others from seeing them, by segregating them where neither librarian nor assistants may be able to find them, when called for. The whole question is summed up in the statement that the ability to produce library books when called for, depends strictly upon keeping them in their proper place: and this is quite incompatible with promiscuous handling upon the shelves.